The project formerly known as "Project San Dimas" is all grown up now is now officially called "eBay Desktop".
Looks like we did something right. The project has even moved from it's old domain, www.projectsandimas.com to it's own website as a subdomain of eBay! You can now download Project San Dimas eBay Desktop from http://desktop.ebay.com! Take 'er for a spin and give Alan Lewis (eBay PM for the project) some feedback.
Charles
I just finished my presentation at UBC and it was another great event. We had a good attendance and some really really good questions. I was very pleased to see how enthusiastic a lot of the students were. I was also pleased to see some very good criticisms in the audience. This is a positive thing. I very much appreciate criticism. It means a few things - people are listening, they are interested about the technology, and they are giving opinions on how to improve it, and to me, these are the most valuable because ultimately, it will be these people who will be the ones using it!
I also enjoyed this presentation a bit more because it gave me the chance to speak about Apollo. I've worked with it in projects prior, but wasn’t able to say anything about it simply because of how early in development it was (and still is). I'm really excited though to see Apollo hit the masses and hopefully see some very cool applications flood the web.
As always, here is my presentation slide deck from the event. See you on the flipside…
Charles
Looks like I’m scheduled to present again at my future alma-mater, UBC. Last time I was there, I did a presentation on the joys of Flex. This time, I get to show off Apollo! Ooooooh. As usual, food and drinks will be provided, and we will be accepting resumes. This is a great chance to see some of the new and exciting technologies that Adobe's brewing up, and if you're familiar with Apollo at all, then you know what I mean. Hope to see you there!
*oops, looks like I forgot to add the event details :p
When: Tuesday, February 13rd, 2007 from 5:30pm - 6:30pm
Where: DMP 110 @ UBC (Hugh Dempster Pavilion, 6245 Agronomy Road)
Charles
Since starting at Adobe, I’ve been exposed to a lot of the new and exciting technologies that they are releasing…Flash 9, Flex 2 and Apollo! What do they all have in common? They all are based off of the Flash Player 9 run-time. So, just as an experiment out of curiosity to see what kind of base these future technologies will have in the coming years, I decided to research and crunch some numbers. After only a few minutes, I was quite pleasantly surprised. The next few posts will be dedicated to my results. I am trying my best to keep all (except for the conclusion and possibly the comparison sections) unbiased and simply matter-of-fact posts. See for yourself…
Charles
This is a quick glance at the worldwide usage of Flash Player across all versions. A look at the graph below will tell you that the Adobe Flash Player is used on an approximate 96% of all Internet-connected computers!1 This is a staggering statistic. A closer look at the graph will show that the Flash Player has a significantly higher presence than Windows Media Player, a difference in the area of hundreds of thousands of users. And considering that Windows Media Player is bundled with every version of Microsoft Windows, then that’s quite a feat.
Comparison
In addition to the Windows Media Player comparison that I mentioned above, I would also like to compare it to PHP and AJAX. As with the previous post, I am choosing these because they are some of the most popular Internet technologies today. Again, I will mention that the measure for PHP is based on all computers deploying and/or hosting websites, while the comparison with Flash Player is measured against all computers connected to the Internet. The AJAX results are taken from a study conducted by eWeek.com's Evans Data2.
PHP has an estimated worldwide use of 37% as of early 2006, roughly one year ago3.
AJAX, after well over 2 years of popularity, is being used by as much as 25% of developers (of those surveyed in Brazil) to as little as 18% of developers (of those surveyed in North America)4 as of August 2006.
Flash Player 9 has already matched those numbers after only 6 months with an estimated worldwide adoption rate of 35%5 and across all version, a worldwide adoption rate of 96%.
1http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/
2http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009845,00.asp
3http://www.phparch.com/issuedata/articles/article_226.pdf
4http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2009845,00.asp
5http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html
Here is a simple look at the duration it takes for previous Flash Player versions to spread1…
Comparison
This comparison will match Flash Player to PHP. Although this may seem like an apples to oranges comparison (client-side technology vs. server-side technology), I chose this because PHP is one of most popular web technologies currently used today. I should make it clear that the measure for PHP is based on all computers deploying and/or hosting websites, while the comparison with Flash Player is measured against all computers connected to the Internet.
PHP 5, the latest release since PHP 4, has found usage on roughly 1.82% (4.89% of 37.19%) of websites after 2 years of reaching a stable version2.
Flash Player 9, the latest release since Flash Player 8, has worldwide penetration of 35% after only roughly 6 months of release.
1http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer/version_penetration.html and http://www.communitymx.com/content/article.cfm?cid=511F7
2http://www.phparch.com/issuedata/articles/article_226.pdf
Adobe Flash Player, self-proclaimed as "the world’s most pervasive software platform" certainly can hold that title. The results that I've given not only show the Flash Player to be ever-prevalent, but also (and more importantly) ever-growing. With each successive release taking less and less time to reach 85%+ adoption worldwide is amazing and I don’t think that any other software platform can even compare.
A lot of this is attributed to the ease of upgrading from previous versions…extremely quick downloads, easy install (typically two clicks), and no restart. After upgrading, it’s hard to even realize that you've changed release versions!
We're at Flash Player *9* now, not in Flash Player Beta. Each successive release adds a LOT of value to the player, whether it’s a more rigid and secure sandbox model in Flash Player 7, or the drastic increase in performance in Flash Player 9.
A lot can be said for the viability of the Flash Player and I am extremely excited to see how Flex, Flash-Lite and Apollo burst onto the scene in the next short while.
Charles
